UX (user experience) is a part of design that usually goes unnoticed by most users - but it's an integral part of making an encounter with a product to be as seamless and intuitive.
The main aim of UX is to make the user's life easy. If you try to remember the last time you went through an app or a website or even used an everyday item like a microwave, you will probably not remember the whole experience of navigating the app or appliance. That is an example of good UX. You will more likely remember the process if it was tedious and unpleasant.
I’ll take a guess and say that at one point you have gone through a review section of an app on its app store. The review section can be a place of horror for UX designers and developers alike, but can also be a place to collect meaningful sentiment analysis on how users of a certain app feel about the experience they went through when using an app.
When users encounter a pleasant experience with an app - for example, when an app does what it’s supposed to do perfectly - they will leave a shining review. Likewise when they encounter a problem - bad UX - they will leave a negative review or a suggestion on how the experience can be made better.
So How and Why is UX Important?
A good user experience does wonders for a product. It can make customers more willing to purchase an item, keep them coming back to the app or website, or even recommend you to to other customers.
There are a few key things that have to be met for a product to have good UX. First, it has to be useful to the customer, solving a need that they have.
Secondly, it has to be usable – the user is supposed to find their way through the app or website without any assistance or hinderance.
Finally, it has to be desirable. This means that, aside from solving a user’s problem, the app or site has to look good enough and be engaging enough to keep the user on it.
Good UX goes beyond just the looks. An app or website has to have a combination of good interface design, good usability, and good performance. If any of these fails and a user has to ask for support, the last component is good customer support.
Forrester defines user experience as: Users’ perceptions of the usefulness, usability, and desirability of a Web application based upon the sum of all their direct and indirect interactions with it.
Bad UX and Its Effects
Bad UX will stop a customer from completing a task. And if you are running a business, this will hurt your conversion rates. It can also make competitors appear more desirable, and drive user ambassadors away from your product.
Disregarding the need for a good UX also leads to high development costs when trying to remedy problems after a product launch. A lot of the issues encountered when going to market can be solved by taking UX design into consideration at the beginning of a project.
The UX Process
The UX process ensures that the end product serves its intended purpose. Let’s take a look at the UX process to get a better picture how it’s done.
Step 1: User Research
User research is all about understanding the problems users have, what their main need is when using a product, and what experiences they are used to. This step requires gathering data that will inform a lot of the design decisions on the product.
Step 2: Design & Ideation
After gathering data, analyzing it, and making sense of it, the next step is using what you've learned to guide the design decisions of the product. This way, the design you develop serves to improve the experience of the user
Step 3: Prototyping
This step involves creating a mock of the real product before creating the final product.
Step 4: Testing
In this step, you test the prototype of the product with actual users to inform whether their needs are met sufficiently.
Step 5: Reiteration
Finally, the insights from the testing phase are used to make sure anything that is identified as a hinderance is removed in readiness for the final product.
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